


I'm sorry I couldn't save you...

by jargoc



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Flashbacks, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, if you squint really hard it's matt/shiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 12:40:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7715242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jargoc/pseuds/jargoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Leader.<br/>The calm, decisive head of Voltron.<br/>The champion.<br/>These are the the names given to Takashi Shirogane.<br/>But none of them feel right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm sorry I couldn't save you...

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a freewrite, just to dig into Shiro's mind, and it ended up as this. I've been trying to claw my way out of writers block, and this is a product of that.
> 
> This is just barely Shiro/Matt sorry haha it's more like the illusion of Shiro/Matt. They don't kiss at all sorry ;;

 

The Leader.

The decisive head of Voltron.

The champion.

These are the the names given to Takashi Shirogane.

But none of them feel right.

He doesn't know who he is, but he takes on the names. He lifts them onto his shoulders despite the weight because there are others looking at him. Counting on _him_ to be the leader they need. But the thing is, he's not sure he's qualified. 

How can someone lead when they barely know who they are? How can they save the universe when they themselves need to be saved. Shiro's drowning, barely keeping his head above the waters as night terrors of memories he didn't know he had assault him from every angle, threatening to suck him under. 

Some days are better than others, as it always goes, and most of the time no one notices. For that Shiro is eternally grateful.

He doesn't want any of the paladins to know how fragile he actually is.

He doesn't want them to know that sometimes when he's sitting with them all he can think about is the way Lance's mother will feel if he can't protect her son. He thinks of the way Keith looks at him when they're alone... even though Shiro knows he doesn't have have half of the strength Keith thinks he has. He panics over the fact that Hunk is too good, too kind, and too important to the universe just to have Shiro protecting him. And that every time Pidge looks in his direction all he can think is how he's already failed them once.

He can't let them know that despite being called the cool headed one, he is anything but.

He doesn't want to disappoint them, and sometimes the fear of failing them is the riptide that sucks his feet from under him. It's the current that sends him hurtling deeper into the chaos that is his mind.

Most mornings he wakes up with sweat dripping down his neck, and a scream forming on his lips. So most nights he doesn't sleep. He tries to fill his days with training, moving his body, moving forward, anything that will keep his mind focused on now, and less on the trail of failure behind him. He tries to convince himself he doesn't need to know who he is, who he was on that galran ship, what he became. He tells himself he can be the Shiro his team believes he is; that defeating Zarkon, finding the Holts, forming Voltron, are all he is now.

His team seems to believe it. Allura seems to have complete trust in the strength Shiro pretends he has. He hopes that one day he can believe it just as much as they do. 

But the voices in his head remind him just how wrong they are, and he cant get them to stop. 

No matter how many times he tries to silence them.

* * *

It's one of the good days, when Shiro has a flashback that snaps something inside of him.

Usually his memories come back to him during a fight, or during a bad day. While Shiro is never really prepared for the flashbacks, this one was particularly blindsiding.

It's just him and Pidge sitting in the landing bay as Pidge works tirelessly at one of their pods. Shiro enjoys helping Pidge. There is something familiar about the way their eyebrows twitch when they're working something through their mind, that makes Shiro feel at ease. Besides, helping made Shiro feel useful, and being useful always lightened the weight on his shoulders just a bit. Sometimes Hunk came to help out--which was always fun and made Shiro smile--but today Coran had demanded that Hunk do some training on the training deck. So it was just him and Pidge, working in the silence.

After ten thousand years, some of the flight pods still refused to turn on, despite Pidge working hard on them. This pod was particularly stubborn, but Shiro knew Pidge could do it. He tinkers away on some of the metal parts Pidge had entrusted him with while they glare at the hologram searching for something.

It was a good day.

A calm day.

Until the pod hummed into life and Pidge's excited _whoop_  made Shiro look up.

Sitting in the pod in front of him was Matthew Holt, glasses just barely hanging off of the tip of his nose and pride brimming in his eyes.

And the riptide sucks him under.

* * *

"Takashi!" Matt grins up at him from behind a hologram, glasses skewed and his hair a mess from obviously not sleeping.

Shiro yawns, and rubs at his eyes, raising a suspicious eye brow at him. Matt liked to sleep, it usually took both Shiro and his father to yank the guy out of his sleep pod. If he was awake at this hour it only meant one thing. He hadn't slept at all.

"You know if you don't get any sleep you're not going to be able to preform your duties when we actually need you to," Shiro says, stepping deeper into their small makeshift kitchen and pouring himself a cup of coffee.

"Good morning to you too," Matt says with a small annoyed puff. He fixes his hair and straightens his glasses before turning back to whatever he had on his screen.

Shiro's lips tug upward into a smile when he looks over the rim of his coffee cup at the younger explorer. The Holts were amazing and brilliant and Shiro felt extraordinarily proud to call himself their pilot. He sits at their small kitchen table--if you could even call it that--and looks over at Matt's screen, "So what'd you spend all night doing?"

Matt perks right back up, grinning at Shiro as if he was waiting for him to ask. He pushes his glasses up in a dramatic sort of way and Shiro has to bite back a laugh, Matt was always excited about his research. The excitement and joy was infectious. Shiro wanted to ask what Matt was working on, just as badly as Matt wanted to speak about it. He didn't mind getting swept up in Matt's excitement, in fact, he looked forward to it.

"There is this... thing," Matt starts out, tapping on his screen, "it's not too far from here and it's practically exploding with energy levels! It's fascinating. See?" he turns his screen so that Shiro can look at what Matt is talking about. Shiro didn't completely understand what he was looking at but it didn't take a genius to see just how high the energy readings were, and to know that it wasn't normal. Or what they would consider normal.

Shiro must of looked impressed because there was a proud glitter in Matt's eyes.

The look sent his pulse racing, and Shiro presses the cup to his lips again to take another sip. "So what is this... thing, exactly?" Shiro asks. 

"Thats the thing," Matt says, taking the screen back and biting at his lower lip. "I don't know what it is." Matt runs his fingers through his hair and looks through some of his notes. Shiro can practically see the gears turning in his head as his eyes pour over the frantic scratches in Matt's notebook. He's about to ask Matt what he thinks it is when Matt speaks again, "I thought it was maybe a planet or something, but I think it's moving," Matt squints at the screen as if squinting would help him find the answer. "It's like nothing I've ever seen before," He looks up at Shiro with bright hopeful brown eyes and that strange something stutters in Shiro's chest. "What if it's aliens?" Matt says, his voice practically shivering with excitement.

"Aliens, huh?" Shiro smirks, amused and charmed by everything Matt is, "Wouldn't that be something?"

 

_"Takashi," Matt breathes, his voice trembling, "Takashi, if anyone can escape from here it's you."_

_"Stop that, we're all getting out of here, I'm not going to leave you," Shiro answers. He tightens his grip on Matt's hand and swallows the tight knot of anxiety that rises in his throat. His eyes slip down to the bandages on Matt's leg and nausea rolls over his gut. "Matt," he says, closing his eyes and resting his forehead on Matt's shoulder, "I'm so sorry, I had to..."_

_"Don't apologize," Matt's crying now, tears roll down his face and Shiro feels his control slipping. He holds Matt closer, pulling him flush against him. Matt presses his face to Shiro's chest and curls his trembling fingers around Shiro's rags. "You saved me, I thought... I thought you were gonna die... Damnit," Matt croaks, laughing and spraying tears between the both of them, "This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. My Dad... he's--"_

_"Don't," Shiro warns him, pulling back enough to grab Matt by the face. He forces Matt to look directly into his eyes, and says his next words like they're a fact, "We're going to get your father, and we're going to get out of here. Together."_

_"Promise?" Matt asks him, eyes filled with tears. Shiro's terrified of the look in his eyes. The hopeful gleam there holds the weight of the world and Shiro is suddenly petrified that he might break under it. He doesn't know if he's strong enough to bear it but he manages to swallow all of that terror, and tells himself he'd do it. He had to._

_"Promise."_

"Takashi!" Matt screams, throwing himself forward as galran soldiers threaten to take Shiro away. Shiro doesn't go without a fight, which the soldiers had apparently been anticipating. A small army of them flood their cell, and Shiro attempts to take them out one by one, until he hears Matt's pained shriek. Shiro _'_ s gut falls to his feet and hewhirls to the direction of Matt's voice, teeth bared and legs ready to push him forward. Galran soldiers hold Matt like a rag doll, one has it's hand snarled through Matt's hair while the other holds a gun to him.

"Stop!" Shiro screams, panic and dread rising up inside of him. "I'll come with you."

"No! Takashi!" Matt sobs and the galran soldier tightens his grip, causing Matt to cry out. "You promised me! You promised!"

The words hits Shiro so hard that he's momentarily breathless. He _had_  promised, but if he didn't do this Matt might be killed. He couldn't let that happen. Tears threaten to spill from his eyes but Shiro bites them back, and his voice is as steady as it's ever been when he says, "I said I'll come with you. Let him go."

The soldiers pause, looking between Matt and Shiro before giving the soldiers behind Shiro a nod. The soldiers holding Matt throw him to the ground and Shiro aches. He wants to run to his side and tell Matt it's going to be okay, that he would come back, that he wouldn't let anything happen to him. He wanted to tell him so many things, confess so many truths, apologize for everything.

A needle jabs him in the neck.

Matt's screams are the last thing he hears before fading into darkness.

 

_You broke your promise._

You couldn't save him.

 

_You can't save anyone._

* * *

Shiro comes to on his hands and knees. He gasps, choking as he breaks the surface of consciousness and tears stream down his face. His heart beat is so fast that Shiro thinks he must be having a heart attack, that or that some how time was moving at hyper speed. The roar of blood rushing to his ears is so deafening that he can barely hear Pidge worriedly screaming his name. His mind is still reeling, and he can still see Matt's betrayed gaze, he can still feel Matt's tears between his fingers, he can feel the familiar suffocating weight of failure, and he can't breathe.

He's gasping.

He's drowning.

His failure fills his lungs with every desperate breath, and he knows it's not real. He knows that he's breathing, that he's hyperventilating, that he's panicking. He knows that Pidge is shaking at his side. He knows that he needs to pull himself together.

But all he can hear is Matt's voice.

_You promised._

Shiro dry heaves as grief washes over him, knocking the breath out of his chest and making his head spin with the intensity. He failed Matt, he would fail Pidge, he would fail the universe. He wasn't fit to pilot the black lion. He wasn't a leader. He was a failure. They were all going to die because of him, he couldn't protect them...

He couldn't protect them...

He couldn't protect them...

Something hard hits his cheek and suddenly Shiro is face to face with a worried Pidge. "Shiro!" Pidge screams, grabbing Shiro by the shoulders and squeezing hard. Shiro blinks, his heart still racing furiously, but his mind snaps back to the present. "It's okay," Pidge says, adopting a comforting tone. "It's going to be okay. You did the best you could..."

Shiro's eyes go wide, and he now realizes that Pidge's eyes are also filling with tears. He must have been speaking out loud.

"We're going to find them. Together," Pidge says, and the words make Shiro's stomach do another turn. "You can still keep your promise." Pidge crushes themselves to Shiro's chest and Shiro holds them close. The familiar feeling gnaws at the raw burning in his chest, but Shiro doesn't push them away. He presses his face into Pidge's hair and tries to focus on the warmth of their touch. Pidge was alive. Pidge was here. He wasn't alone.

"You don't have to do it alone," Pidge says as if plucking the idea right out of Shiro's mind. They pull back and smile at Shiro, "We're a team, together is when we're strongest."

Shiro takes a deep breath, and then another. Pidge was right. Shiro might be the head of Voltron but there is no Voltron without the others. Separately the lions were just lions, but together they form Voltron, defender of the universe. So while he might not have what it takes to save anyone, together they could rescue the Holts, together they could save the universe. 

Together they could keep his promise.


End file.
